Evelyn Maclean
Beamsville, Ontario: Evelyn Maclean was born in 1920 on fertile land mid-way between Hamilton and Niagara. The house she was born in backed onto the Beamsville Preserving Company. It is likely her parents, Donald and Alexandra Maclean, would have worked in some capacity on the fruit farms which stretched out through the area. It is my understanding that Donald Maclean, Evelyn’s father, may have left Inverness and Scotland behind and taken an opportunity to travel to Canada because of a job at one of these farms and canneries. Donald Maclean later took a job on the freight railway lines, which were in themselves a big proponent of the canning industry..
Dr. C. W. Elmore attended Evelyn’s birth at the house in Beamsville. In a curious article from the Hamilton Spectator Oct. 22, 1946 edition:
“I can not recall if Evelyn was a pretty baby,” the doctor said. “As far as I was concerned, she was just another baby being brought into the world and there was no reason why this particular case should be remembered. After all, it was 26 years ago.”
A year after she was born, the family moved to Hamilton, having purchased a modest home at 214 Rosslyn Avenue South with a little square stained glass window to the right of the front door. This is where she grew up.
Evelyn had no known brothers or sisters. She was registered as the only child of Donald and Alexandra Maclean.
John Dick
On the morning of March 6, 1946—the last day John Dick was seen alive—the sun rose at 6:48am to a day expected to be ‘partly cloudy and quite mild with a few scattered showers.’ The expected temperature was 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees centigrade). The sun set at 6:12pm that fateful day. The curtains closed on John’s performance, ending his short stage appearance in what would become a fantastical and tragic, murder mystery. As the audience, we get little insight into the character he played, other than as the immediate, dismembered victim. So who was John?
Evelyn had no known brothers or sisters. She was registered as the only child of Donald and Alexandra Maclean.
Alexandra Fraser (Frazer) Maclean
Evelyn’s mother, Alexandra Fraser, was born in Glen Urquhart, Inverness-shire, Scotland, October 1885. Her parents were Alexander and Mary Grant and she was the youngest of five sisters. She died in Hamilton, Ontario, July 7, 1964.
“Why doesn’t she tell us who it was?” she said in an interview with Eva-Lis Wuorio for the Globe and Mail, October 17, 1946. “She is shielding someone. I know she is shielding someone. And it isn’t her father and it isn’t Bohozuk.”
Donald MacLean
Father. Served 5 years in Kingston Penitentiary for accessory to murder
Born March 1878 in Scotland. Died May 2, 1955, in Hamilton, Ontario.
Robert William Bohozuk
Born December 15 1918. Died November 15 1996.
Robert William Bohozuk.
Father: Frederick Bohozuk. Mother: Annie Smatynchuk
Brother: John Henry Bohozuk (Born January 30 1917. Died January 22, 1936 by suicide according to newspaper reports at the time.
Home: 21 Picton Street West, Hamilton, Ont.
The sporty oarsman, Bill Bohozuk, changed his last name to Burton when he remarried, staying in his hometown of Hamilton.
In 1940, when Bill was 21, he secured a job at the Dominion Foundry on the first day of the registration process for the National Resources Mobilization Act. He was one of the lucky who wouldn’t be sent off to war. He liked race horses; fancied he had an eye for the fillies – had two racehorses he had two of them and travelled with them on the Canadian Racing Circuit – this was where he met Helen Kleean Mitchell, a widow. They married at St. Patrick’s Church in July 1944. She left for California in October 1944, to look after a sick friend or relative, but came home for the trial to show support for her husband who she would divorce in 1950.
SEE the report in the Montreal Gazette about the divorce. #learnmore
The Dog
The Maclean family’s Pekingnese. Feel free to give him/her a name.
The Evelyn Dick Files 